“In an ultra marathon, and particularly one of 100 miles or more, you get to a place, a state, that you never go to in the rest of your life. A tiredness so extreme that you’re now just surviving, trying to stay alive. Of course, you have a get-out, you know you can stop, but to keep going, you are faced with an extreme reality.” – Adharanand Finn

In the trail racing world, the distances are much more “ish” than what would be acceptable in road races. A marathon might be 24 miles or it might be 28 miles…it might be 26.2. Had I been at the pre-race meeting, I would have known that this “marathon” was about 27 miles